LECTURES AND EVENTS
JST 2022.1.18 18:00
Online Lecture
Ms Yuko Arimori, Goodwill Ambassador for UNFPA
「ソーシャルインクルージョンを実現するために、スポーツができること」
‘What Sports Can Provide for the Implementation of Social Inclusion’
Ms Yuko Arimori is a renowned marathon runner and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). She was born in Okayama prefecture in 1966, and attended the Shujitsu High School, and Nippon Sports Science University (NSSU) in Tokyo. After graduating she joined the Recruit Running Club, hoping to join the national team for the Barcelona Olympics. Ms Arimori went on to win a silver medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, followed by a bronze medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and she received the Japanese Athlete of the Year award both those years. In 1998 Ms Arimori became the first runner to be awarded professional status by the Japanese Association of Athletics. On 18 February 2007, she retired from professional running after running the Tokyo Professional Marathon.
She created Hearts of Gold, an accredited non-profit organization in 1998, of which she is President. It was the first nongovernmental Japanese organization to focus on sports for international societal change.
In April 2002, Ms Arimori became the Director of RIGHTS Inc., a management company for athletes, whose motto is ‘Be happy with SPORTS’. Currently she is a member of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) Sport and Active Society Commission, President of Special Olympics Nippon, Vice President of the University Sports Association (UNIVAS), and member of the women’s committee of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF).
In June 2010 she was the first Japanese woman to receive the IOC Women and Sports Award. In December of the same year Ms Arimori was decorated with the Royal Order of Monisaraphon, Kingdom of Cambodia.
In August 2020 Ms Arimori was appointed as a Laureus Ambassador for Laureus Sports for Good, to use the power of sport to transform lives, helping young people overcome violence, discrimination and disadvantage.
Ms Arimori’s motto is ‘Transform everything into my power’. As to her credo, Ms Arimori esteems her own life, which is the only single existence in this universe, and she tries to live each moment as faithfully as possible, since the moment is irrevocable.
Online Lecture Programme for 2022
JST 2022.2.28
Dr. Taisho Nakayama, Kushiro Public University of Economics, Hokkaido University,
‘A borderland history of Sakhalin/Karafuto: border-shifting, people-relocating, nation-redefining and memory-constructing’.
JST 2022.3.14
ASJ Annual General Meeting and Special Lecture
The Ambassador of Singapore to Japan, H.E. Mr. Peter Tan Hai Chuan
'Singapore Hawker Culture and Food Diplomacy’'
JST 2022.4 (Date to be confirmed)
Mr. Jason James, Director of the Daiwa Foundation,
‘William Plomer - a man of exceptional judgement’
